Police: 1 student, suspect dead at US school

Updated: 2014-06-11 02:51

(Agencies)

TROUTDALE, Oregon - A gunman shot and killed a student Tuesday at a U.S. school shortly after classes started and was found dead himself as police arrived, authorities in Oregon said.

The attack panicked students, and a lockdown was ordered.

Morgan Rose, 15, said she hid in a locker room with another student and two teachers.

"It was scary in the moment. Now knowing everything's OK I'm better,'' she said.

Daniel DeLong, 15, said he saw a physical education teacher at the school with a bloodied shirt.

"It just, like, happened so fast, you know?'' he said.

Police did not identify the slain student or the gunman or say how he died.

The first reports of shots fired came at 8 a.m. on the next-to-last-day of classes. Police initially seemed uncertain about whether there was a live shooter in the school.

Students were eventually led from the school with hands on their heads. Parents and students were reunited in a supermarket parking lot.

The shooting follows a series of attacks at or near school campuses across the country.

On June 5, a 19-year-old man was killed and two other people wounded when a gunman opened fire in a building at Seattle Pacific University. Police said the 26-year-old suspect had no connection to the university but apparently was planning to kill as many people as he could before killing himself.

Gun control is a fiercely divisive issue in the United States, where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution, alongside such basic rights as free speech and freedom of religion.

President Barack Obama's plan for broader background checks on gun purchases, along with proposals for a ban on military-style assault rifles and limits on ammunition capacity, failed last year in Congress.

That was despite the December 2012 killings of 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, that shocked the nation.